Book 1,066: The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer

What happens when you take the Christian allegory out of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, modernize it and add a little queer joy and some millennial/gen-z humor—I’m not lying I legit rolled my eyes at booping death on the nose? Meg Shaffer’s The Lost Story is what happens and it was a delightful fantastical journey that I very much enjoyed.

The publisher reached out with a review copy in early 2024 and I finally got around to it just over a year later and it was worth the wait.* When I got to the passage that the publisher included in the outreach email I gasped and was like “THIS is why I requested it!” (I 100% did not re-read that email before starting this on vacation, I just knew exactly what it was and verified it afterward.)

The Lost Story takes place in rural West Virginia, but also in Shanandoah (not Shenandoah—the national park/forest) a magical world reached through doorways in trees. The two protagonists Rafe and Jeremy spent six months here when they were teens, and the world thought they’d been kidnapped or murdered. They only go back, or even consider going back, when Emilie contacts Jeremy, who has made a name for himself finding lost girls, to help her find her long lost half-sister who went missing in the same forest 5 years before they did.

Beautiful and dangerous and dark and strange West Virginia. Why didn’t they get to have magic here, where the hills rolled like ocean waves and the morning mist was as thick as the silence of a family keeping secrets? (Prologue)

The story picks up pace dramatically with their return to Shanandoah and we find out why Rafe can’t remember anything, why Jeremy spent so many years staying away from Rafe, and what really happened around the time they went missing. Without giving too much away it was young love (whether they knew it or not at the time) being quashed by Rafe’s dad and societal standards and once they escaped into Shanandoah they found themselves, with their roles reversed—Jeremy the posh well-off Brit becomes a knight and steward; and Rafe, poor and “redneck” from rural WV, finds himself a prince due to his prowess with archery—and each other in a fascinating magical society.

There’s a light spoiler in the next two paragraphs, skip over if you don’t want to see it. The third one is safe and is probably the biggest for me.

The three largest critiques I have of the book is that it was slightly too predictable, that I wish the reason for their having gotten lost in the woods and not coming home wasn’t what it was, and that the narrator between chapters was less. The predictability is expected, with the genre and following in the steps of Lewis and even J.M. Barrie (or at the very least the directors of the films) in using real life characters as the magical villains. The one that bothered me was Jeremy and Rafe being forced to flee a final time from Shanandoah, but given when and how it was created it makes sense that what they needed wasn’t there and the fact that Emilie stays and wishes for what she wishes for opens up their possible return and/or a sequel.

The other one I thought we’d left behind in the 1990s and early-2000s. I mean I know it still happens, society sucks and queer people are in danger everywhere especially these days, but the amount of joy that’s reached in the end of the novel doesn’t necessarily need that to be the why. It does to create the big bad, but Shaffer could’ve been more creative about it or come up with another angle, and she does lean more into the spousal aspect of it and reiterates that it was mostly emotional and psychological, but I just wish she’d have come up with something else.

‘I don’t know what’s worse, that he doesn’t remember I’m in love with him or that he doesn’t remember he was in love with me.’ Jeremy smiled, but it was so fleeting she wasn’t sure if she’d seen it or not. (Chapter 11)

‘Might be fun to fall in love with you again,’ Rafe said. ‘I don’t remember the first time it happened so, who knows . . . maybe it’ll feel like the first time.’
‘Two first times? Now you’re being greedy.’ Jeremy leaned close just as the sun sank behind the mountains and the night fell like a black curtain over a kingdom of Shanandoah. He whispered into Rafe’s ear, ‘But I like the way you think.’
And then Sir Jeremy proceeded—very gallantly, of course—to make Prince Rafe forget his name. (Chapter 35)

The biggest critique by far was the interludes from the narrator. I get why it was there and it did make me laugh a few times (especially the “this isn’t that kind of story” fade to curtains note when Rafe and Jeremy reconnected), but there were times when that came up that I just wanted to skip over it. Thankfully, for the most part they were very short and did add some information or color, but overall it felt like a crutch. That being said, when you find out the where and the why of what you’re reading it makes more sense, I just felt there could’ve been more hints in that considering how predictable the story was at points.

Recommendation: I very much enjoyed this C.S. Lewis inspired story of queer love and sisterly affection. It wasn’t at all what I expected and I was quite glad Shaffer left it open to a sequel in the end. There were parts I wasn’t the biggest fan of (the predictability, the reasons behind the running away, the narrative intrusions), but the pros definitely outweighed the cons for me. Reading this definitely made me want to check out Shaffer’s debut novel, The Wishing Game.

*I received a copy of The Lost Story via NetGalley in return for my honest opinion. No goods or money were exchanged.

Opening Line: “Once upon a time in West Virginia, tow boys went missing.”

Closing Line: “Either this isn’t a fairy tale . . . Or it’s only the beginning.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from The Lost Story
“He wasn’t. He absolutely was not all right. Something stirred in his blood. he looked around him, saw the peaks and slopes of the forest hills, deep and dark. When he was a little kid, those hills had fascinated him, frightened him. He’d gotten into his head those rolling hills were sleeping giants covered in thick green animal pelts, giants who’d wake one day and take the world back for themselves. He’d outgrown his fear of them, of course. Now it was back.” (Chapter 14)

“They stayed up until four in the morning eating, talking, never even turning the TV on because, whether they would admit it or not, they were both hoping something would happen. It didn’t because no one on earth was more chickenshit than a boy in love with another boy who doesn’t know he’s in love with him.” (Chapter 17)

“You’d think we’d all shout and scream and dance around, but it wasn’t like that. Joy is quieter than people think it is. Especially the joy of getting back something you thought was lost forever.” (Chapter 22)

“Well, turns out it was a magic pencil. But you don’t really need a magic pencil to write a magic book. All books are magic. An object that can take you to another world without even leaving your room? A story written by a stranger and yet it seems they wrote it just for you or to you? Loving and hating people made out of ink and paper, not flesh and blood? Yes, books are magic. Maybe even the strongest magic there is.” (Storyteller Corner: The End)